When support for a cause smacks of a new imperialism

An email going around contains a petition to the Government of Nigeria, asking it to rescind the death sentence imposed on a young woman, Amina Lawal, for adultery. The email says Lawal (whose baby is proof of her crime under the Sharia law of her state) is to be buried up to her neck and stoned to death this week, the execution having been postponed until her baby was weaned.

There are reasons not to sign it. Another email from Nigerian human rights group Baobab respectfully asks international "friends" to stop the letter campaign. It advises that the information contained in the petition is not only inaccurate but may be damaging this case and others like it.

"Although the stress on Ms Lawal is obviously considerable and awful, she is not in immediate danger of being stoned," Baobab says. Her legal process is still several steps away from the final option of appeal to Nigeria's Supreme Court. So far, not one such appeal taken up by Baobab, with the support of women's groups in Nigeria, has been lost.

If there is an immediate danger to the women under sentence of stoning or flogging, says Baobab, it is that local politicians or vigilante groups will carry out the sentences to defy international opinion. In one case in which a woman was flogged, despite an appeal pending and despite an international letter-writing campaign, the local governor boasted of his resistance to "these letters from infidels".

Besides, the human rights groups do not want pardons for the women; they want the convictions and sentences imposed by local religious courts to be overturned by higher courts, to show they are wrong in law.

Baobab makes it clear international moral support is welcome, and financial support is needed to help fight the cases through the courts. But they want protest letters to be based on accurate information, and to be put in culturally sensitive terms.

"We appreciate that many who join letter-writing campaigns are motivated by the same sense of international solidarity and feminist outrage (that motivates us)," Baobab says. "But when protest letters represent negative stereotypes of Islam and Muslims, they inflame sentiments rather than encouraging reflection and strengthening local progressive movements."

Cultural change is better pushed from within than imposed from outside. And this is precisely what is happening in developing countries around the world. Women's groups, human rights groups and, in Muslim countries, Islamic scholars and lawyers are working to change laws and customs that oppress people and abuse human rights.

They do need international moral and financial support. The women of Afghanistan who were fighting against the Taliban said one of the hardest things was feeling they had no support from women outside.

Yet the difference between support and cultural imperialism can be difficult to judge. The US Senate recently passed a $US15 billion($A23 billion) bill to stop the spread of AIDS in Africa, which included funding to teach "feminism" to African men. The money will be used, in part, to fund programs to reduce sexual violence and coercion, child marriage and polygamy.

There's no doubt feminism is just what is needed in many Third World countries; and not least in those countries of southern Africa in which about a third of the population is HIV-infected, where teenage girls have six times the rate of infection as teenage boys, and where cultural practices and sexual preferences are a large but little talked-about cause of the spread of the disease.

A preference by men for "dry sex" (think about the implications of this preference) means women put crushed-up leaves, sand or astringent herbs in their vaginas, which cause abrasions and make it much easier for them to contract the virus. A belief that having sex with a virgin will cure them of the disease causes men to seek younger and younger girls. Another belief is that when a man dies, before he is buried his widow must have sex with his nearest male relative to cleanse the village of death.

Culture is not sacred. And as Doris Lessing observed recently, customs are never as strongly valued as when they are about the subjection of women. There are many progressive men and women in Africa who know that cultural practices have largely been dreamed up by men to suit men, and must be changed, not only to stop the AIDS pandemic but because justice demands it.

The Bush Administration's commitment to the empowerment of women would have more credibility, however, had it not been cutting funding to any programs that might give information about abortion as part of their service. The fact that a large part of the new money is to be used to promote sexual abstinence also gives rise to suspicions that its main interest is in pursuing its own conservative social agenda globally.

Many African men do need to be taught feminism. But perhaps it is African women, rather than men in Washington, who are best suited to teach them.